Swiggy raises $15M in series D funding led by Bessemer

Online food delivery platform Swiggy has raised $15 million in a Series D funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Existing investors including US-based Harmony Partners, and Singapore’s RB Investments also participated in the round. With this, the company’s total fund raise totals to $75.5 million.

The freshly raised funds will be used by Swiggy’s to upgrade its technology base, to on-board newer restaurants to choose from and for bettering its delivery efficiency.
Apart from this, the company has hired vice presidents across business functions including marketing, product, HR, design and Finance to meet future business expansion plans.

Previous funding: In May, Swiggy had raised Rs 47 crore (a little over $7 million) from Norwest Venture Partners, DST Global and Accel Partners, according to an ET report. In January, Swiggy raised Series C funding worth $35 million from new and existing investors for using across user acquisition, adding restaurants, tech upgrades, hiring etc. In June last year, the company raised Series B funding worth $16.5 million. In April 2015, it raised $2.5 million from Accel Partners and SAIF Partners.

1 million orders completed across India

Currently Swiggy’s food delivery services are present in 8 cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Delhi, Gurgaon, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai and the company claims to have over 9000 restaurant partners live on its platform. By the month of April, it claimed to have made 1 million food deliveries and that it receives an average of 35,000 orders daily, and is growing at 25% month on month. This has gone up from just 1,000 orders daily from April last year.

Earlier in May, Swiggy added a “surge fee”, which is a convenience charge of Rs 20 per delivery on food orders placed on holidays, festivals and rainy days, or when the availability of delivery boys is low. Swiggy co-founder Sriharsha Majety denied that Swiggy’s delivery personnel had fixed working hours, but did not divulge any other information.

Competition

Swiggy bets on ‘no minimum orders’ and features like live tracking of orders placed via all of its partner restaurants. An ET report in May also mentioned Nandan Reddy, co-founder of Swiggy, as saying that the company considers itself a market leader using these features. The report added that the average basket size of an order has increased to Rs 375 without stating the previous basket size or mentioning the growth.

Zomato: During the March 2016 quarter, Swiggy’s rival Zomato said that more than 20% of its revenue in India came from food orders.Its daily average orders size ranges between 25,000-26,000 orders. It claimed and average order value of Rs 480 as of May.

Foodpanda: Rocked Internet owned Foodpanda claimed to have $100 million in cash reserves and that at least 65% of its orders came from mobile during Q1 2016. The company also bets on features like restaurant ratings and the newly introduced ‘Hygiene Ratings’. It also has tied up with domestic Indian entities like IRCTC, and private companies like Uber and Zo Rooms to gain an advantage in the Indian food delivery space.